Rating: 
Summary: Terrific story!
Review: Terrific story! I couldn't put it down. Makes the storm and stress of the 'great proletarian cultural revolution' come to life.
Rating:
Summary: Among the best of Cultural Revolution survival memoirs.
Review: The struggle of Liang Heng and his family to endure and survive the insanity of the Cultural Revolution makes for a gripping read. This was one of the first books I read on Maoist China and it remains one of the best.
Rating: 
Summary: A Man's Life in an Revolutionary Period
Review: This book makes you understand the history of People's Republic of China(PRC) during the revolutionary period. In history, I have learned that the revolution in China was hard but happy for citizens. After reading this book, it wasn't like that after all. I realized that it was different in an individual perspective. It tell how painful it was for the author(Liang Heng) and his family, because they didn't agree to the Communist Party 100%.
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Summary: Angela's Ashes in Red China
Review: When consolidating their rule over the most populous nation on Earth, the Red Chinese sought to create a modern industrialized state in place of a feudal and disorganized one. Requiring more than rapid industrialization to realize their goals, the communists also sought to suffuse every sector of Chinese society with rigid political mentality requiring not only strict party loyalty, but a state of constant revolution, in which individuals and communities constantly sought to prove their mastery of "revolutionary discipline". Various miniature revolutions shake China - turning friends and relatives against each other - with fearful consequences for those who couldn't convince the more politically reliable of their strongly "revolutionary" desires. Because the meaning of the revolution itself is vague, even those who would have thought their backgrounds free of "black marks", find themselves under the gun - whether because of views an individual no longer professes, or association with others having displayed a lack of revolutionary discipline or simply because one may comply with a dictate only to find the Party changed direction completely. Liang Heng, whose birth coincided with Ho Chi Minh's epic victory over the French in 1954, suffered for all the above reasons. Never a "rightist" himself, Heng suffered horribly during China's ten year political unrest of the 1960's and 70's. Heng's mother, a loyal party member in the late 1950's, reluctantly obeys the party's order to criticize superiors during the "Hundred Flowers" movement. Heng, like many, is never sure if the follow-up to the "Flowers" (in which those who faithfully criticized their elders were then rounded up for their insuboridination) was a knee jerk reaction to the unexpected ferocity the earlier campaign engendered, or whether the earlier movement was intended to weed out those critics to begin with. Only the consequences - in which Heng's mother must wear the feared "rightist cap", forever soilng her revolutionary record and that of her family - is considered. When Heng's father, who writes for the Hunan daily, becomes suspect for his admitted youthful infatuation with the nationalistic Koumintang, the family's political reputation suffers even more. Though loyal communists, Heng finds his father's name listed as an enemy on the many revolutioanry placards around their home city of Changsha. The Party maxim's - stressing tolerance for those whose backgrounds evince youthful mistakes - does little for Heng, since the revolution is guided by fervor and not nuance. And, though Maosim meant that party loyalty superceded family loyalty (sorry Confucious), it didn't prevent family members from suffering for political sins of family members. Through the turmoil - which evolves from parades to open warfare in the street using everything from sticks and stones to missiles - Heng avoids sanctimony. Heng suffered much of the chaos as a child, and isn't above admitting that he too wrote some revolutionary placards himself. He works hard to rehabilitate his father whose first major action is to cast out Heng's mother for her "rightist cap". Experience proved the decision, for its pain, proved correct, if insufficient, to protect the family. "Old Liang" himself suffered mightily for the cause, never once complaining. As a middle-aged exile, forced to bring the revolution to the peasants by joing them, Heng's father survived the indiginities of a country-bound city-types, never pausing to warm the lives of the peasants with Marxist fervor. Heng's private revolution, unlike the larger one surrounding him, is about nuance, and the narrative never attempts to surpass the perspective of a child of Heng's age during the cultural revolution. Like the more recent "Angela's Ashes", Heng knows that the more credible narrator is the one who feels and experiences rather than faithfully records. And the experience, rather than one of victimization is of survival. The revolution's true enemies are long gone by the time the cultural revolution degenerates into civil war, and only Heng's clear and non-judgmental narrative can spot that the war's victims and instigators are one and the same.
Rating:
Summary: Angela's Ashes in Red China
Review: When consolidating their rule over the most populous nation on Earth, the Red Chinese sought to create a modern industrialized state in place of a feudal and disorganized one. Requiring more than rapid industrialization to realize their goals, the communists also sought to suffuse every sector of Chinese society with rigid political mentality requiring not only strict party loyalty, but a state of constant revolution, in which individuals and communities constantly sought to prove their mastery of "revolutionary discipline". Various miniature revolutions shake China - turning friends and relatives against each other - with fearful consequences for those who couldn't convince the more politically reliable of their strongly "revolutionary" desires. Because the meaning of the revolution itself is vague, even those who would have thought their backgrounds free of "black marks", find themselves under the gun - whether because of views an individual no longer professes, or association with others having displayed a lack of revolutionary discipline or simply because one may comply with a dictate only to find the Party changed direction completely. Liang Heng, whose birth coincided with Ho Chi Minh's epic victory over the French in 1954, suffered for all the above reasons. Never a "rightist" himself, Heng suffered horribly during China's ten year political unrest of the 1960's and 70's. Heng's mother, a loyal party member in the late 1950's, reluctantly obeys the party's order to criticize superiors during the "Hundred Flowers" movement. Heng, like many, is never sure if the follow-up to the "Flowers" (in which those who faithfully criticized their elders were then rounded up for their insuboridination) was a knee jerk reaction to the unexpected ferocity the earlier campaign engendered, or whether the earlier movement was intended to weed out those critics to begin with. Only the consequences - in which Heng's mother must wear the feared "rightist cap", forever soilng her revolutionary record and that of her family - is considered. When Heng's father, who writes for the Hunan daily, becomes suspect for his admitted youthful infatuation with the nationalistic Koumintang, the family's political reputation suffers even more. Though loyal communists, Heng finds his father's name listed as an enemy on the many revolutioanry placards around their home city of Changsha. The Party maxim's - stressing tolerance for those whose backgrounds evince youthful mistakes - does little for Heng, since the revolution is guided by fervor and not nuance. And, though Maosim meant that party loyalty superceded family loyalty (sorry Confucious), it didn't prevent family members from suffering for political sins of family members. Through the turmoil - which evolves from parades to open warfare in the street using everything from sticks and stones to missiles - Heng avoids sanctimony. Heng suffered much of the chaos as a child, and isn't above admitting that he too wrote some revolutionary placards himself. He works hard to rehabilitate his father whose first major action is to cast out Heng's mother for her "rightist cap". Experience proved the decision, for its pain, proved correct, if insufficient, to protect the family. "Old Liang" himself suffered mightily for the cause, never once complaining. As a middle-aged exile, forced to bring the revolution to the peasants by joing them, Heng's father survived the indiginities of a country-bound city-types, never pausing to warm the lives of the peasants with Marxist fervor. Heng's private revolution, unlike the larger one surrounding him, is about nuance, and the narrative never attempts to surpass the perspective of a child of Heng's age during the cultural revolution. Like the more recent "Angela's Ashes", Heng knows that the more credible narrator is the one who feels and experiences rather than faithfully records. And the experience, rather than one of victimization is of survival. The revolution's true enemies are long gone by the time the cultural revolution degenerates into civil war, and only Heng's clear and non-judgmental narrative can spot that the war's victims and instigators are one and the same.
Rating:
Summary: Gut wrenching true story.
Review: You won't believe your eyes. If you want to hear someone wax intellectual about China, go somewhere else. If you want to read about the consequences of living in China during the Cultural Revolution, read this. It is a severely sad story of people growing up in China. Heng writes as if he wrote it the day after these events happened, with all the mixed feelings a child would have. He writes without hindsight but leaves that up to you. Great book.
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